Winging along at an altitude somewhere between the Bluebird of Happiness and the Chicken of Depression... random esoterica from writer Chad Love celebrating the joys of fishing, hunting, books, guns, gundogs, music, literature, travel, lonely places, wildness, history, art, misanthropy, scotch and the never-ending absurdity of life.

Friday, November 6, 2009

But apparently they're nothing compared to what some of our game laws used to be...

I was recently given a copy of the October 1935 edition of Outdoor Life. Besides that wonderful cover art the magazine features a compilation of all the states' game laws.

Here are the season dates and regulations for Oklahoma's 1935 quail season...

Quail....Nov. 20 to Jan. 1

Note: Quail may not be hunted except on Monday, Wednesday and Friday of each week during open season and on Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day and New Year's Day, or, if these holidays fall on Sundays, on the preceding Saturdays.

Bag and possession limits: 10 a day, 50 a season.

Believe it or not, the laws concerning what days of the week on which you could hunt quail persisted well into the 1980s or even the early 90s. I can't recall exactly when Oklahoma decided to take the great leap forward to something resembling a normal quail season. Maybe an old-time Okie bird hunter could chime in and refresh this youngster's memory.

I vaguely remember the old quail hunting laws but since I didn't grow up with any kind of quail hunting tradition when I took up the sport as a teenager (if you can call stumbling around with no dog and no clue "taking up the sport") I pretty much ignored what I considered a bullshit law and hunted quail whenever I could (in season, of course). What can I say, I was young and I usually couldn't quail hunt on Monday, Wednesday or Friday anyway because I was too busy skipping school to go bass fish, bowhunt, shoot pool and other various and sundry juvenile delinquent activities.

Quail season starts on the 14th this year, runs through Feb. 15 and I can hunt them on any damn day I want to. Screw the good 'ol days. Now if we could just figure out how to bring our quail population back to 1935 levels...

I work in the public education sector/industry/quagmire - certified to teach but not teaching as I dread the headache - and I only wish that our juvenile delinquency were limited to bass fishing, bowhunting, and pool shooting.

Interesting recount of some odd regulations. We have a few baffling ones here too.

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About Me

Chad Love is a full-time freelance writer/photographer whose work has appeared in a number of publications, a few of which even paid him. But not much.
Along the way Chad has won awards from the Associated Press, the Society of Professional Journalists, the International Regional Magazine Association, the National Shooting Sports Foundation and the Oklahoma Wildlife Federation.